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PACE 24 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE April 25,
I
by Richard Schwartz
“Shoah" is Hebrew for “annihi
lation." It is also the title and sub
ject of an astonishing 9'/2 hour film
soon to be screened in Atlanta. It is
not an easy film to watch. It con
sists almost exclusively of inter
views, often of people describing
the same thing. Yet somehow you
remain engrossed as you become
aware of watching one of the most
harrow ing and important attempts
to deal with that unfathomable
breakdown of humanity which was
the Holocaust.
The film-maker is Claude Lanz-
mann, a French Jewish journalist
and one-time colleague of Jean-
Paul Sartre. Ten years of research
and shooting resulted in 350 hours
of recorded material w hich Lanz-
mann edited down to its current
length. He tracked down, talked
to, and questioned death camp
survivors, ex-Nazi Party function
aries and Polish peasants. Though
he is himself rarely seen on camera,
his presence is felt, as he inquires,
cajoles, and sometimes relentlessly
pressures his subjects into remem
bering.
The historian Raul Hilberg, one
of the foremost scholars and wri
ters on the bureaucracy of the
Holocaust, argues in the film that
rather than ask the big questions
and come up with small answers, “I
have preferred to address these
things which are minutiae, or de
tails, in order that 1 might be able
to put together, if not an explana
tion...at least...a more full descrip
tion of what transpired.”
This, too, is Lanzmann’s basic
approach. The color of the gas
vans at Chelmno, the noise of the
engines, the time the trains arrived
at Treblinka and what the temper
ature was, all details he extracts,
forcing the participants to relive
their experiences.
A number of them break down.
Abraham Bomba, a barber forced
to cut the hair of the women about
to enter the gas chamber, shows
how he cut, then stops, sobbing.
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‘Shoah’ compels viewer to ponder
Holocaust as contemporary reality
“We have to do it,” says Lanz-
mann, “You know it. I know its
hard and 1 apologize, but please,
we must go on.”
Jan Karski, a courier for the Pol
ish government-in-exile, now a
teacher, collapses in tears before he
starts his description of a visit to
the Warsaw Ghetto. For 35 years
he hasn’t spoken about it, but says,
“I understand this film is for histor
ical record so I will try to do it.”
It is the victims who seem to
suffer most in recounting their
memories. The Polish peasants liv
ing near the extermination camps
speak most openly, sometimes leav
ing Lanzman visibly shaken. The
(ex?) Nazi officials, most of whose
interviews were filmed secretly, re
tain for the most part a language of
gross and sickening understatement.
Like the head of Reich Railways
Dept. 33 of the Nazi Party, in
charge of “special trains.” He denies
having known at the time the true
nature of the death camps, “like
that camp—what was its name? It
was in the Oppeln district...I’ve got
it: Auschwitz.”
In one respect, “Shoah” is uni
que among non-fictionalized films
about the Holocaust. There is no
archival footage, no ranting maniac,
no corpses—and the horror is all
the greater for the raw and living
testimonies. Though Lanzmann’s
subject is death, his film forces us
to reconsider the Holocaust as con
temporary living reality. It brings
those of us who were not there as
close as we are ever likely to get to
grasping the feelings of those who
were. Like the survivor from Vilna
who, walking through a forest in
Israel, remembers the woods of
Ponari, where he was forced to dis
inter thousands of bodies with his
bare hands. Where on opening the
last mass grave, he recognized his
entire family. Where anyone who
said “corpse” or “victim” was
beaten, where “the Germans made
us refer to the bodies as ‘Figuren,’
that is, as puppets, as dolls, or as
‘Shmattes’ which means rags.”
It is ultimately impossible to
review Lanzmann’s “Shoah” in the
nor.mal manner. The only way to
do it justice would be to repeat the
testimony of each of the survivors
interviewed, pausing to remind one
self how many tens of thousands of
murdered souls invest with their
silence each painful living echo.
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* * *
"Shoah" will he presented at the
l.e! out Plaza theatre I root May
7-29. Part / will he shown at / p in.
and 6:30 p in. and part II at 1:30
p. in. and 7 p.m. daily.
* * *
Richard Schwartz, who was The
Southern Israelite's Paris corres
pondent for several years, is pres
ently living and studying in Lon
don.
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